The True Sources of the Nile: A Novel

An erotic tale of love and betrayal that asks: What are the consequences of passion?
Anne, an American living in central Africa, finds her innate optimism challenged by the realities of her work for peace and democracy. Love is the furthest thing from her mind until she meets Jean-Pierre, a high-ranking, Paris-educated member of the Tutsi ruling class, and they begin an irresistibly intoxicating and blindingly intense affair. While her efforts to improve the conditions in Burundi are laborious and painstaking, the force of their love seems to have conquered the differences between them. For a time, it seems to be an enchanted romance full of burning desire and mutual fascination, until the intractable chaos of the outside world intervenes.

The first crack appears when Anne's mother is diagnosed with cancer, bringing the needs of her family to a fever pitch on the other side of the globe. On a trip to her mother's bedside in the United States, Anne makes shocking discoveries about her family. She returns to Burundi only to find a tense situation that ultimately leaves 100,000 dead in a horrifying outbreak of racial fighting, a crisis that devastates Jean-Pierre's family and reveals a past utterly unknown to her. As violence erupts around them and the divisions between them grow sharper, they wrestle with how to come to terms with their pasts and the possibility of a future together. Meanwhile, the acute demands of her family force Anne to search for her own answer to an unbearable question: What horrors and betrayals can be justified in the name of loyalty, duty, and love?

As much about passion and the power of love as it is about obligation and immutable ties to family, The True Sources of the Nile is a story of lovers from profoundly different worlds, and the terrible choices they must make.

SARAH STONE lived in Bujumbura, Burundi, from 1991 to 1993, where she volunteered at the Jane Goodall Institute, taught English as a second language, and reported on human rights. She is on the faculty of the College Writing Programs at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her husband, writer Ron Nyren, in the San Francisco Bay Area.